Falling in love can be very awkward. However, attempting to fall back in love with your spouse of 31 years can be even more awkward, as demonstrated in David Frankel’s Hope Springs. In a hilarious yet somewhat unresolved manner, Kay (Meryl Streep) and Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) seek to restore their once youthful love in a now crumbling marriage.

Kay and Tom live in suburban home with two college graduated children out of the house. In a very mundane and routine life, the married couple has clearly lost the spark in their romantic relationship, as demonstrated through sleeping in separate bedrooms, barely speaking with each other, and not celebrating their 31^st anniversary in any special way.

Determined and hopeful to revive their once intimate marriage, Kay buys a book about marriage counseling written by the intelligent, blunt, and kind Dr. Feld (Steve Carell). While reading his book, she learns that he offers week-long intensive marriage counseling courses at his office in No Man’s Land, Maine. Kay books the $4,000 counseling session and purchases two plane tickets and convinces her extremely reluctant and consistently complaining husband, who sees absolutely nothing wrong with their marriage, to join her.

Throughout the counseling sessions, the plot builds nicely as the audience learns more and digs deeper through Kay and Arnold’s history to understand why their marriage went downhill. Unfortunately, while the plot builds and questions arise to keep the audience hooked, the resolution of the movie is not completely satisfying as some questions remain unanswered. That being said, the comedic timing and one-liners throughout – especially by Tommy Lee Jones – considerably make up for the far from perfect dramatic structure.

While it can be painfully awkward to watch a movie where two children fall in love for the first time, watching two 50-or-60-something adults who have been married for over 30 years attempt to revive their romance is even more painfully awkward (yes, even more awkward than watching the 12-year-old characters Sam and Suzy fall in love in Moonrise Kingdom), which makes the film at times extremely hilarious. Streep and Jones nail the roles of a seemingly normal older couple who had lost the magic touch to their marriage, which gives a very convincing sense of reality to the audience.

Frankel uses silence to portray the seriousness and lack of a meaningful relationship Kay and Jones have grown into, most notably in the first third of the film. The silence is a useful tool to reflect the mundane and quiet life Kay and Arnold live in their empty-nested suburban home. As much as silence is a positive and reflective tool, the poor choice music throughout is usually extremely distracting and emotionally unfitting for the scenes at the time. The imperfect balance between silence and the soundtrack helps to support the inconsistency between the rising action and resolution of the plot, which predominately makes the film messier.

Overall, Hope Springs has many high highs and many low lows. While Jones, Streep, and Carell completely nail their characters and portray their stereotypical roles in an veritable manner, the overall plot is somewhat disappointing as it is not completely resolved. The convincing and realistic overarching storyline of a married couple losing the spark in their marriage is developed in an extremely sober manner, which leaves the audience sincerely hoping one day that their marriages will never turn out to be as poor and unfulfilling as Kay and Arnold’s.

Grade: C+

Rated: PG-13 (for mature thematic content involving sexuality)

Hope Springs opens in theaters on August 8, 2012.